Free Ruby and the Stone Age Diet by Martin Millar

they’ll be after you do it, you can think about going on a trip round the world and probably when you got back you’d still hope to run into them on the street. You can do anything at all and none of it is any good. It is completely pointless. Lovers never come back. You can’t influence them to do it and you would realise this if only you weren’t so dementedly unhappy all the time.’
    The pub is noisy with little room to move, and we have to guard our drink against a marauding barman who keeps trying to snatch it off the table even though there is a good half inch left at the bottom.
    ‘So we won’t try again tomorrow?’
    ‘We might as well. What else is there to do?’
    ‘Write poems?’
    ‘What was it like in bed with Cis?’
    ‘I can’t remember.’
    ‘That’s a pity. If you could remember it it might cheer you up.’
    The rain beats on my bedroom window and seeps through the warps in the frame to make small puddles on the window-sill. With my finger I draw the puddles into little shapes like spaceships and pretend they are flying free through the sky.
    The drummer that Ruby gave my phone number to has joined the band and we are already planning to play our much-delayed gig. I am writing a new song. It is about Cis. It will be wonderful. We will make a record out of it and it will be a success. Cis will hear it, realise she really does love me and come back. I think this sort of thing all the time.
    It will be a rush to get the song written and rehearsed in time for the gig, but it will be worth it.
    I shout to Ruby to come and listen and I play her the chords. She says she likes it.
    ‘Do you think it might touch Cis’s heart and make her want to see me again?’
    ‘It might.’
    ‘If I don’t see her again I’m going to commit suicide.’
    ‘How?’
    ‘I’m not sure. I thought I might carve my goodbye note on my chest with a kitchen knife, then go and die on her doorstep.’
    ‘Well at least she’d remember you. But don’t do it yet, I’ll miss you.’
    ‘OK, I’ll leave it awhile.’
    Nigel appears with a bundle of posters, drawn by us and photocopied at the cheap place in Coldharbour Lane. Tonight we will go and stick them up all over Brixton. I do not enjoy flyposting but I like seeing our name on walls. Also, if we don’t do it no one will know about the gig.
    Ruby says she will cook a meal so I can eat when I getback, but when I arrive home she claims that just looking at food made her feel sick so she had to throw it all down the toilet.
    ‘I spent the evening writing a story instead. It’s about you and Cis fucking. You want to hear it?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘Right. Sit down comfortably.’
    The lonely old lady on her balcony never looks as if she is sitting down comfortably. Maybe when you are old you can’t get comfortable if you are lonely, no matter how many well-made chairs you have saved up for your retirement.
    ‘It’s my period,’ said Cis, one day. ‘I love having sex when it’s my period. Let’s fuck till we’re swimming in blood.’
    So we do. Cis is wearing a tampon. I take it out for her and it is red with menstrual blood. Cis likes her menstrual blood. So do I. In the air it quickly dries and goes brown.
    I lick the blood from around the lips of her vagina. Cis likes this but the pressure of my tongue is often not quite enough to make her come so when she is excited I press harder on her clitoris with my finger and I slide another finger up her anus and then she comes quite quickly in a noisy flurry of blood and urine and some other liquid that I can’t put a name to.
    Next she sucks my penis. I like her doing this and when I come she keeps the sperm in her mouth and stretches up to kiss me quickly so she can spit some of it back into my mouth while it is still warm.
    After a little while we start fucking. First Cis lies on top of me, then I lie on top of her. She puts her legs around my neck and while she is doing this she rubs her clitoris with her